Recovery

J.L. Conrad's Recovery inhabits a dreamscape filled with fragments of conversation, remembered loved ones, and the profound disorientation that accompanies loss. Written over the span of a week, this poetic sequence invites us to imagine how a body flooded with grief or physical pain becomes self-identified with these sensations. If grief is an unreality that parallels dreams--this doesn't feel real--then poetry, with its heightened awareness, is what brings us back to the world outside the body. The incantatory poems in this sequence offer a way of moving beyond the self at a time when the only way through is through. As Conrad's poetry provides glimpses into questions of human frailty, loss, and sentience itself, the speaker in Recovery looks not for transcendence but embraces a body marked and wounded, a body trailing ghosts. ...

From "Recovery"

In my dream we were in a tree

and we were suffering. In this case, suffering with could not alleviate

suffering. It proved impossible to overlook the pits in our stomachs. The car lurched forward, into the knees

of the pedestrian, the line of pilgrims.